Later this year, Oracle will begin requiring people interested in gaining Java and Solaris certifications to attend "hands-on" training courses, at an additional cost of thousands of dollars. The new rule goes into effect Aug. 1 and regards Java Architect, Java Developer, Solaris System Administrator and Solaris Security Administrator certification paths, according to a notice on Oracle's website.

Nothing beats Oracle when you have to do heavy database stuff. With DBs, people pay for that, and they should.

The problem is with Solaris, IBM and Red Hat will make sure Linux will scale from the low end to the high end, and Oracle is turning Solaris into a niche. It's not going to be cost effective when Linux will be "good enough", and there will be loads of cheap talent.

MS does this really well. They make sure there is tons of cheap talent which can implement their products.

Both of those countries could develop their own Oracle competitors. China is nationalistic/crazy enough that Beijing could mandate it and make it so. I can see China GPLing the whole thing and giving it away.

India may just want to bootstrap their own software sector. They aren't going to be cheap labor forever.

Anyway, Oracle makes great dBs, but I see the Sun acquisition as being an expensive failure of an experiment for Oracle, in the long term. Linux/Windows and x86/ARM are good enough, and businesses won't have to hire expensive niche talent. The only thing worth anything was gaining control of Java.